mōdgethanc wrote:It looks like a weird mixture of Latin, French and (u mad?) romanized Bulgarian.

Would you specify what you meant by "u mad? romanised Bulgarian".

He's in denial that Romanian has a large Slavic influence and tries to play up its Italic heritage (which nobody is disputing) instead, for what I can only assume are nationalistic reasons.

I am not trying to deny anything,sir!:) I am native Romanian,you are not!Who have studied that language more?I did!And I know how it sounds,yet you are wrong,Romanian does not sounds and never sounded like French.Yet Romanian has some Bulgarian loans,yet it does no look slavic in written way!Does it hanged the fact that Romanian is close to latin?of course not!Do not forget about the Germanic and Arabic abstrata in the West.By the way Romanian is only 10-15% Slavic at vocabulary level,akin to the number of Germanic loans in French which it has the almost same number.Just go check the category of Slavic words in Romanian and you will see!:) aslo check Vulgar Latin vocabulary and you will see that Romanian needed no loans.Aslo there is Aromanian included aswell.Have a nice day!:D

And i am not even of Romanian origin ,I am Aromanian!i don't care about Romanian nationalism.i just like Romanian as it is,without French loans.i just care about inherited latin words.And I have opened that thread because I wanna hear opinions I never said that Romanian has an italic substrata.But there are misteries in this language and it makes it more interesting!:) I am not forcing anyone to think that Romanian is the centre of earth.I never been a part of Romanian nationalism.i don't even care about Politics! I just wanted to learn new things but if you think that the thread is uninteresting ,then I will delete it...Have a nice day again!:)

Levente wrote:Mihai, the way a language sounds to a foreigner is subjective.

For example Portuguese has no Slavic influencebut people still say that it sounds like Polish or Russian.

If Romanian sounds French to someone then that's the way it sounds to him/her.

To me it's like Italian spoken by a Bulgarian. And that's just my opinion.

By the way, I don't understand spoken Aromanian, but for me it sounds the same way.

Hmmm it sounds the same?but the phonology isn't even touched by Slavic one.For example "I" is not pronunced like in Romanian for like umm...let's say "lupi" anyway it sounds different from Romanian in terms of phonology but eh it is your opinion,aslo we borrowed some sounds from Greek like [ð] [θ] [ɣ]

To the trained ear, Romanian on average should sounds like mix of romance and Albanian with slavic undertones, with a pattern of east-slavic "uh's" and strong and clear Asian "å/ˆ" - like in Turkish, Kazakh and Korean. The consonants in Romanian are clearly mostly italic, but with more slavic consonant frequency {s,sh,z,j,v) than the other romance languages and definitely more "tz" that any other language that I've heard. To the untrained ear Romanian can sound simply like slavic, or like a mix of slavic and latin, or something totally unique and glorious. However, it depends on the kind of language you are hearing. If you are watching the news or something where more officious language is used, it will sound more latin. If you are listening to people speak at a very familiar level, it will sound sound like slavic/albanian/unique exotic and glorious.

Because of our obsession with our latinity we Romanians are subject to a very slavophobic culture, and as a result, have a tendency to be slavophobic, with an otherwise inexplicable (and ironic) superiority complex. I must add that we have very little exposure to our latin neighbors (brothers really, much more so than the Italians, French or Iberians) and their beautiful languages and as a result are under the impression that somehow Russian is their representative, which is false because Russian is an outlier among them and sounds very different than the other slavic tongues, which unlike it, are not really ugly at all, just richer in consonants, in certain slavic consonants (s,sh,z,j,v) and in the vowel "o", which is not even properly pronounced in Russian. Our slavophobic superiority complex is also ridiculous knowing that slavic blood runs in our veins and that our lexicon was actually about 35% slavic if not more, before we relatinized it with words from French in the 19th century, which today constitute an earnestly disgusting 38% of our lexicon. Many of these words were unnecessary and borrowed just to replace an already existing word of non-latin origin.

Russian is not an outlier because you cannot say that any of the Slavic languages is way more representative then the other. Russian sounds like an Eastern Slavic language, Croatian sounds different from any Eastern Slavic language whilst for example Czech is very different sounding.

are not really ugly at all

Whether a language is ugly or not depends on who's speaking.

Many say French sounds beautiful, many say it sounds weird, gay, ugly or annoying.

"o", which is not even properly pronounced in Russian.

You cannot say that it is not properly pronounced.

Over time many o's have changed into a's, but they chose not to change the letter in the word itself.

I don't speak any Romanian, and generally for me it mostly like Spanish/Portuguese/Italian with some Slavic (and maybe French?) accent/words mixed in some parts. Oh, and in some occasions it sounded just like Japanese (I'm more familiar with Japanese than Romanian though because of heavy exposure to anime )But nevertheless,if I had to listen to Romanian without knowing it's Romanian, I would most likely recognize that this is at least a Romance language